An enterprise application (EA) is a large-scale software application or software platform that includes other applications, typically to provide a collection of business functions or operations in a logically unified manner. An enterprise application includes infrastructure needed for integrating the various included applications, and for operating in conjunctions with other enterprise applications.
A data processing environment deploys an enterprise application by deploying the enterprise application infrastructure and the included applications. Deployment of an application, whether of the enterprise application infrastructure or of an application included in the enterprise application, includes configuring the application so that the application can access the resources that the application needs to execute in the data processing environment. As an example, an application may require access to a web-service located elsewhere in the data processing environment to be able to execute in the data processing environment to provide the function implemented in the application. During deployment, such as by using a deployment engine, an administrator or a system must configure the application to identify a location, a method of access, policies, and parameters for establishing access to that web-service.
As another example, an application may have to associate or bind with a data repository, a library, an object, a file, or another application, to be able to operate in a data processing environment. For example, relative to a repository, during deployment, the application must be configured to select the repository or its instance, authenticate to the repository, and establish a protocol of interactions with the repository. As another example, for binding with an object instance of a class, among other things, the application must be configured to identify an existing object or instantiate a new object when needed.